Extreme heat means a period of unusually high temperature, often lasting long enough to stress people, buildings, and critical infrastructure. In security and operations work, it matters because heat can reduce hardware reliability, raise power demand, and make cooling systems less effective. Servers, routers, batteries, and industrial control equipment are all more likely to fail or throttle when temperatures stay high.
In cyber security, extreme heat is not a cyberattack, but it can create the conditions that make attacks or outages harder to handle. Staff may be less available, backup generators may be under extra load, and facilities may lose redundancy if cooling or power is strained. Defenders watch for temperature alarms, capacity limits, and degraded performance because environmental stress can turn a small technical issue into a broader service disruption.